Is Skull and Bones worth $70? Beta players aren’t so sure

Beta balance issues made players leery of giving up their booty

Ubisoft and Yves Guillemot might see their pirate adventure as setting a new standard, but players aren’t convinced that Skull and Bones is worth $70 after spending time in the open-world game’s free beta. Reactions on the Skull and Bones subreddit are mostly split between lovers and haters, with the latter predominating, though a few had more detailed insights into what Ubisoft could’ve done to convince them.

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“The game is fine as far as I’ve played but there’s no way it’s worth 70,” one user wrote in a post titled Not Worth 70dolleroos. “The ships feel like they’re sliding on the water rather than moving through it, Immersion is broken every time your at a hub area and they’re are a dozen other players running about. Stupid simple details like why doesn’t the mast flag blow in the same direction as the wind all make this less of the game it’s supposed to be.”

Several players disliked the ship stamina system, which sees your crew run out of energy to adjust the sails after a minute or so. You can eat food to recover stamina, though the ship and crew size and even the wind’s direction have no bearing on your mates’ stamina loss.

“It will make for more interesting game-play and strategy if the stamina at maximum speed is consumed only when going against the wind (red wind indicator), while going neutral (white wind indicator), no stamina is consumed or gained, and lastly, while going with the wind (green wind indicator), you gain stamina,” one user said.

A few more detailed posts dug into balance problems with everything from currency to questing. Silver, the most common currency, is almost useless, they said. It’s true. After you reach a certain point in your piracy, you need pieces-of-eight. There’s a trade system that some called half-baked, where you pick up goods at one port and sell them at another for a profit – almost always in silver.

Combat feels off, equipment matters less than your Infamy rating, and unlike Sea of Thieves, where there's an incentive for using different kinds of ships, Skull and Bones players say there's hardly any reason to use a small ship once you've got a big one.

Quests and treasure hunts devolved into predictable, time-consuming affairs that some likened to MMO dailies, though that’s exactly what others wanted. Even Redditers who said they wouldn’t spend $70 on Skull and Bones mentioned how much they enjoyed the game’s relaxed, easygoing pace.

Skull and Bones enters early access on Feb. 13, 2024, and since Ubisoft will still continue working on the game during early access period, you can expect plenty tweaks and improvements as Ubisoft figures out what players want.

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